To understand what is going on here, you had best read the first PinkCat: Running in the Shade post, but short summary, this is a campaign report for our Shadowrun campaign set in NorCal through the filter of a cartoon made by one of the team members.

Episode Thirty-Seven: Art Attack

Guest Starring: DD,DoubleUp and Rani.

The school has been invited to participate in a showing at the Museum of Pretentious Art where they are given room in the Rundown Wing for New and Poor Artists. As the student artist are setting up, they are mostly ignored as the museum security (where Officer Bloodhound is moonlighting) is trying to figure out how various work of art are disappearing.

Of course Pink and friends decide that they need to find out who is behind such dastardly crimes. They investigate as they can, around the security force, and hide cameras in the artwork. It turns out a team of mice and bats are hiding in one of the artworks and coming out to steal at night, they have hacked the museum’s security. So the team sets up a new installation (“Arratoi Tranpa”) and lure the thieves into the middle of it, trigger it, and it works just like the old mouse trap game and traps the thieves so that Officer Bloodhound can arrest them. Of course Pink and crew get no credit, but they know it is a job well done.

What really happened:

We are hired by a Mr Johnson at the Simmer of Love pho restaurant. He wants us to acquire a piece of artwork . . . from a museum. Classic heist alert! After negotiating for some working capital and a slight increase of final fee, we agree.

The target is a mixed media-AR art display on its way to the museum. PinkCat scours the matrix for information while BB and Renny go inside (as visitors) to scout the museum, Double Tap scouts the exterior and finds that they have extensive anti-drone measures for “intellectual property protection”.

The target will be transported into the museum in advance of installation following the closing of the current exhibition (of Aztlan “found object art”) and the wrap party. We decide that hitting during the party will be the best time to strike as the security will be stretched and lots of people not usually there will be around.

We do considerable research on the site, scouting the physical site as best we can. Researching the Museum and its Board of Directors, who are run by a self-interested NGO of rich socialites and corporate posers. PinkCat gets a behind the scenes tour by posing as an eager beaver student who really wants a summer intern job with the museum,

Since, naturally, one of the BoD was also on the school board, Pink hacked into their system that way and “hired” Great Grape Wine Catering to showcase the wines of another BoD member (because, California, of course one of the other BoD members has a winery). We set up some distractions in case they are needed, roach drones to broadcast interference and a zipline to deploy and send a dummy dressed as Zorro to land in the center of the museum (it seemed like a good idea at the time).

Ultimately, everything went smoothly, we got in as caterers, made nice with the “official” caterers while BB scored herself an invite as the “plus one” of a local up and coming musician. Pink, Renny and Double Tap slipped away, acquired the art and hid it away in the catering equipment and then returned. Before they could start serving wine, the power went out and we triggered all our distractions, which ended up helping another team that was stealing an artwork from one of the main floors and then we got to go and serve wine to rich people for the rest of the night. Afterward, we got paid, another successful mission!